The hour settled over the room with the kind of hush that belonged to late afternoons, all golden softness and velvet shadows. Sunlight slipped through the tall western windows in slow, slanted ribbons, folding itself across the floor like silk. It warmed the air not with heat, but with presence, draping everything in something too still to be casual and too delicate to be ignored.
The light caught the edges of the enchanted tapestries that stretched across the walls, shimmering as the constellations stitched into their fabric began their slow, graceful arc. Starlight and rune-thread shimmered in motion, the entire wall moving as though the sky had bent low just to watch her.
The plants responded too, not to sun or season, but to mood. There was no breeze, but the leaves swayed. They tilted, leaned, and curled with quiet intention, their movements pulled by the gravity of the woman stretched out at the center of it all.
His wife.
She lay draped across a conjured couch that hadn't existed until she'd wanted it, and now looked like it had always been there. Deep twilight velvet, the colour of a sky about to storm, curved beneath her in a shape that suggested she wasn't just resting but holding court. Her robe, soft and silver at the collar, pooled around her body like it had melted there. One bare leg crossed the other with careless ease, her toes tapping against some internal rhythm, her hair tumbling around her shoulders in a wild, glorious mess that looked like it belonged to someone who'd never once been tamed.
The card in her hand was expensive. Thick parchment, cream-coloured and heavy, folded with ceremonial precision. The wax seal clung to her wrist like it meant something. And maybe it did. Its edges were still sharp, blood-red against her skin. When she tilted the card, the light caught on a sigil pressed into the corner—old family magic, rich and smug. The handwriting inside curled and twisted with charmwork, silver and gleaming, the script itself just sentient enough to feel intrusive. It wasn't meant to be read. It was meant to impress. To command.
She held it like it bored her. Fingers loose. No urgency. No reverence. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, clean, shaped by breath more than effort. It moved through the room with the same rhythm as smoke or steam or spells that didn't need a wand.
"We've been summoned."
She didn't pause. Didn't wait to see if he'd respond.
"Masquerade. Formal dress. Magical concealments preferred."
She glanced up, eyes catching the light. Her mouth didn't curve, not really, but something in the line of it suggested she was enjoying this. Just a little.
"Bring your husband."
She said it like it was an afterthought. Like it wasn't personal. Like it hadn't just ripped the floor out from under him.
He sat across the room, firelight casting long shadows over the side of his face, his cup of tea untouched in his hand, the porcelain resting against his lower lip like he might drink it eventually. He had no intention of doing so. The tea had long gone cold. But he held it anyway, like a shield. Like it mattered.
He didn't look at her.
Every word she spoke landed exactly where it was supposed to.
He knew who had sent the card. Pansy's handwriting was unmistakable—too dramatic, too calculated, the kind of calligraphy that performed even on parchment. Her invitations were never requests. They were roles written in ink, and you played them whether you liked it or not. This wasn't a party. It was theatre.
A masquerade.
A night built around pretending.
And this time, the part he'd been handed wasn't one he could slip in and out of.
Granger didn't look away. She turned the card between her fingers once, twice, slow and easy, like she was trying to decide what to do with it next.
She didn't say anything else.
She didn't have to.
And if Pansy Parkinson was throwing a masquerade, it wasn't for whimsy. It wasn't for laughter, or lace, or the pleasant distraction of candlelight flickering over champagne. Pansy didn't host for amusement. She staged events the way generals planned wars. From the guest list to the wine pairings, from the music to the magical concealments permitted under the enchantments—it would all be deliberate. Sharp as a wand's edge. Nothing accidental.
Her parties were battlegrounds dressed in silk. Smiling arenas where every detail dripped with subtext, every invitation delivered like a gauntlet, every toast a warning cloaked in applause. They weren't gatherings. They were performances. Rituals of power and performance where pleasure played second to provocation.
And Draco knew how those games were played. He had been raised among them, had learned how to lie with posture, how to threaten with a glance, how to silence a room with a pause placed in just the right sentence. He knew what Pansy's summons really meant.
He said nothing.
He sat perfectly still, fingers loose around a cooling teacup, as though it could anchor him to the version of himself he'd built in this house. Silent. Untouched. Composed. The tea had long since turned bitter. He drank it anyway.
Hermione, stretched across the conjured couch like it had always belonged to her, moved with a kind of lazy elegance that betrayed no concern whatsoever. She flicked the invitation between her fingers, letting it catch the light as if she were toying with the edge of a blade. It shimmered. So did she. The script glinted silver. The wax seal clung to her skin like a charm.
She let it float from her hand.
The parchment drifted toward the far wall and affixed itself beside a glowing map of Saturn's rings—another one of her impossible charms, stitched with runes and starlight, as though she had asked the cosmos a question and it had answered only her.
It belonged there. The invitation. So did she.
And then she stood.
She didn't get up the way other people did. She unfolded. Like fog pulling itself from a lake. Her robe slid from her thigh in a way that made the air seem too warm all at once. The velvet couch, having served its purpose, dissolved with a whisper. No sound but the quiet hush of magic retreating.
She crossed the room without urgency, without noise. The wardrobe opened for her before she could even raise her hand. The doors had never opened like that for him. Not once. They creaked and groaned beneath his touch. They leaned into hers like an old dog recognising its owner.
He hated that.
He hated that the house did this for her. That it softened. That it responded to moods she hadn't even voiced aloud.
And still he watched her. Pretending he wasn't.
Inside the wardrobe, the gowns hovered as if they were breathing. Velvet galaxies. Silks stitched with defensive charms. Gauze-thin masks that shimmered between illusion and memory. She moved her hands through them the way someone might sift through water, unbothered by their weight or meaning.
To her, they weren't protection. They weren't strategy. They were simply choices. As familiar as spoons in a drawer.
He told himself he was only paying attention to her spellwork. That he was interested in the mechanics of the way she summoned the right hanger to her hand, the way her wand barely moved but still conjured enough force to lift embroidered velvet from its place without rumpling the threads. He told himself it was professional interest.
But his gaze caught on the shape of her bare back as her robe shifted. On the line of her calf as she leaned forward. On the single, ridiculous freckle just below her collarbone.
A freckle.
Of all things.
It was gone a second later, covered by fabric. But his thoughts snagged there.
The robe clung to her with indecent ease. The light caught in the folds and edges of her hair. And he sat there like a fool with cold tea and an ache in the back of his jaw.
She chose the gown without hesitation.
Gold. Not bright, not theatrical. A softer gold that caught the light slowly, building warmth in layers. The fabric slipped like liquid when she lifted it, the kind of silk that remembered every touch. The back dipped low, the neckline clean and deliberate. No ornamentation. No embroidery. Nothing to distract from the body beneath it.
She held it up against herself, studying the cut, not the effect. There was no posing. No coy turn of the shoulder. She simply assessed. Then she stepped toward the mirror, the gown draped over one arm, and the room shifted. Something in the light paused. Something in the air drew tight, as if the moment had been marked.
When she eased the fabric into place, it didn't cling like fabric. It settled like recognition. It followed the line of her hips in a slow exhale, rested against her waist like it had known her shape already, caught the gentle rise of her chest with a softness that didn't need to prove anything. Just quiet devastation.
He watched.
Not hungrily. Not with the heavy stare of a man undone by desire. It was quieter than that, sharper, more unsettling. He watched the careful movement of her hands, the slight crease forming between her brows as she adjusted the strap. He studied the stillness of her mouth, the calm in her shoulders. He watched like a man witnessing a door open inside himself that he did not remember building.
His body remained perfectly still, but the tension gave him away. His fingers curled against the arm of his chair. His breath caught just slightly at the top of his lungs. A pulse flickered at the base of his throat. Small betrayals. The ones you only notice if you are already looking too closely.
And she noticed.
She looked at him through the mirror first, not directly but with the faintest shift in her attention. Not a challenge. Not a question. Just awareness. Her gaze lingered for a heartbeat longer than necessary, as if to say she had seen the twitch in his jaw, the stillness of his hands, the place where his control thinned just slightly around the edges.
She did not smile like a victor. She did not tease. She did not wield the moment like a blade.
Her mouth softened instead. Barely. A quiet acknowledgment. A small, private understanding that passed between them without language.
Then she turned from the mirror, the gown falling naturally into place around her. The movement was unremarkable. Her hand rose to lift one strap higher on her shoulder. A simple adjustment. A practical gesture.
The light shifted with her.
It landed on her collarbone in a thin sweep of silver, gathered at her throat, caught in the strands of her hair where they brushed her skin. It was not decorative. It was not staged. It was simply the light choosing her, the way everything else in this house seemed to do without needing instruction.
She spoke without facing him.
"You'll need a mask."
The words were gentle. Not directive. Not teasing. Just true.
He did not respond.
He did not need to. The silence between them said enough. It carried something newly exposed, something unguarded and raw, something he had not intended to give but could no longer pretend he held.
She hadn't taken anything from him.
He had already been offering it.
He just hadn't noticed until now.
***
The manor didn't sit so much as sprawl—too decadent, too precise, too deliberate to be anything but a provocation. White marble climbed high into the dark, kissed with gold trim and lit from within like a temple built for sin. The pillars gleamed like polished bone, the archways curved like whispered invitations. This wasn't a home. It was a promise. A trap dressed as a cathedral.
Even the air outside it buzzed with spellwork.
Illusions flickered along the walls, subtle things that flirted with the eye and vanished before you could be sure they were ever there. Floors shimmered beneath the feet, smooth as still water, tinted gold with every step. Ceilings stretched wide above the crowd, alive with constellations that didn't belong to this world. Stars turned slowly across their surface, unfamiliar and glowing, as if pulled from a sky that only existed in dream.
No hallway led straight. No corridor opened where it should have. The manor guided, gently but firmly, as if it had somewhere very specific it wanted you to end up—and a dozen places it hoped you might get lost along the way.
Magic bled into everything. Velvet-lined alcoves breathed against the skin like they remembered the secrets once spilled there. Candles wept wax that shimmered like pearls. Curtains whispered. Mirrors watched.
The scent in the air didn't come from one place. It built slowly—notes of warm citrus, pressed rose, something darker beneath, heavy and musky and familiar in a way that set the teeth on edge. Wine flowed like potion, thick and jewel-toned, spiced with something that clung to the roof of the mouth and dared you to swallow again. The music had no source. No visible orchestra. It drifted out of the walls, fluid and low, something ancient dragged up from the floorboards and stirred back to life.
And the people?
They didn't mingle so much as orbit one another—masked, gilded, moving like smoke in close quarters. Gloved fingers brushed along bare arms, voices leaned too close to ears. There were no introductions, only glances. No names, only intentions. Every guest had been handpicked. Every moment staged. This wasn't a party.
This was a test dressed in silk and poured wine.
It was a game no one admitted they were playing.
And when the doors opened for her, they all turned.
Not like it was planned. Not like it was polite.
The shift in the room was instant. Breath caught in lungs. Conversations paused mid-sentence. A tray tilted in the hands of a server who forgot, for a heartbeat, that he had a job to do. The air took on weight, suddenly thicker, almost reverent.
She walked forward with bare shoulders and a back exposed to the spine, wrapped in a silver gown that clung to her body like memory. It shimmered when she moved. The hem kissed the floor. The bodice pulsed, faintly alive, like it had remembered old magic and whispered it now back into the room.
Her hair wasn't pinned in elaborate curls. It fell soft and loose, brushed with magic, kept back with slivers of moonstone threaded through like silver thorns. No tiara. No crown. Just quiet power threaded into strands that knew how to shine.
The mask she wore didn't hide her.
It revealed her.
Delicate, carved in a crescent curve that caught the cheekbone and curved along her temple. Lace-like at the edges, but rigid at the core. It left her mouth bare. Her eyes untouched. She was still herself—but sharper. Like someone had written her into a story she wasn't finished telling.
The room had already shifted around her, like gravity changed its rules to follow her lead.
She wasn't a beauty to be admired. Not a muse. Not a sweet-faced emblem of femininity swaying politely into view.
She was the kind of figure priests used to fear. The kind that showed up in storms and prophecies. The kind whose name only got whispered when crops failed and birds dropped dead from the sky. The kind that tasted like iron and came dressed in salt.
She rearranged the entire room.
And behind her, one step removed and just off-center, came the man who didn't walk like he was following.
Draco Malfoy moved like something caged, something dangerous held in place by decision, not leash. The lines of his robes were brutal. Black, cut sharp, tailored to contain. His mask—bone-white and shaped like a snarl halfway carved—cast shadows across his jaw. There was nothing warm in it. Nothing soft. He didn't smile. Didn't glance. Didn't bother to check the room.
The room saw him anyway.
Not as her escort. Not as a partner.
As her answer.
There was no theatre in it. No twirl, no choreographed reveal.
They entered, and the room adjusted.
And for the first time all night, the manor—built to unsettle, to seduce, to whisper—held its silence.
Because something in its walls recognized them.
Not as guests.
As gods.
He walked behind her like it meant something.
Step by step, he stayed close, just far enough not to touch, close enough to feel the heat of her in the air she left behind.
Draco moved without sound. He moved like something trained. Something dangerous held in check by nothing but his own will.
He wore black, of course. The kind that wasn't just black, but layered. Threaded through with silver so deep it looked like it had swallowed the light and buried it somewhere in the lining. The sort of cloth that made people look twice. Just long enough to wonder what else it was hiding.
The suit didn't soften him. It didn't flatter or distract. It narrowed him. Pulled him tight. Like the tension inside him had stitched itself into the seams. And his mask—cold, clean, almost surgical—fit his face like it belonged there. It didn't hide him. It stripped him down. Revealed too much. Framed the things no one had any business staring at. The cut of his cheekbones. The shape of his mouth. The way his eyes didn't flinch when they met a stranger's gaze and refused to blink first.
Whatever the crowd imagined of him, he let them. If they looked at him and saw something brutal, something restrained, something they wouldn't want to meet alone in a corridor—he let them. They weren't wrong.
But he wasn't the show tonight.
She was.
He moved like consequence. Like shadow. Like aftermath. Every step she took cleared the way, and every step he took stitched the silence shut behind them again. Eyes tracked them. Mouths parted. Nobody dared approach.
And all of it—every soundless footstep, every taut breath in his lungs—belonged to her.
Not because she had claimed him. But because he had given in.
He hated that.
He hated the way she moved ahead of him like he wasn't even there. He hated the way it made something in his chest settle when she did. Hated the way her back, bare and lit silver in the chandeliers, made his hands curl where they hung at his sides. Not in anger. Not even in want.
In instinct.
She walked like she'd been born for this. Head high. Shoulders loose. Her hands relaxed at her hips, not clutching anything, not posed or calculated. She didn't strut. She didn't glide. She simply moved—and the room arranged itself around her as if it had always been waiting.
The dress was unforgivable.
Silver, sharp at the edges and soft where it mattered. It wasn't stitched to flatter. It clung like it knew her. Like it had spent years learning her lines and had finally been allowed to follow them. The fabric didn't shimmer so much as ripple. Even when she stood still, it moved. Like it breathed. Like it was alive.
He couldn't stop watching.
He told himself he was keeping alert. That he was watching the room. That he was looking for danger. But his gaze never moved far from the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her spine, the place just beneath her ear where her hair had been twisted back to reveal skin no one else had a right to see.
She looked like temptation with a name he wasn't allowed to say out loud.
And that did something to him.
Not in his head. Not even in his chest.
Lower.
Deeper.
Somewhere old. Somewhere buried.
She walked like freedom. Like a woman who knew what she was and didn't owe anyone an explanation. She didn't look back. Didn't check to see if he was behind her. There was no hesitation in her steps, no flicker of uncertainty. She moved through that ballroom like a lit match waiting for someone to draw breath—and she never once looked for him.
And that was the worst of it.
Because he was following.
Because she didn't ask him to.
And still, he followed.
The dress, the mask, the curve of her mouth when she didn't quite smile—it all wrapped around him like a noose. Not choking. Just... present. Unavoidable. A constant pressure just beneath the skin. The longer he walked behind her, the more it wound through him. Around his ribs. Down his spine. Into the backs of his knees, until even the idea of stopping felt impossible.
It wasn't loyalty. It wasn't obligation. The contract didn't make his breath hitch when the light touched her skin. The Ministry couldn't have built the need that coiled hot and bright in his throat every time she turned a corner and he had to follow without rushing.
He was dressed like a man ready for battle.
But the battlefield was her.
And he wasn't here to win.
He was here because no matter how far behind he stood, no matter how much silence stretched between them, she had already changed something in him. Broken something open. Named something he hadn't dared to look at.
And now, he couldn't turn back.
He followed.
Because whatever this was, whatever it became—this moment, this night, this war she was walking into with moonlight stitched into her gown—he would be there.
Not ahead.
Not beside.
But behind her, exactly where she had left him.
Blaise caught sight of her and his expression shifted like a card turned face-up. That slow, deliberate grin curved at the corner of his mouth, the one that made people nervous for all the wrong reasons. The one that came right before trouble. It wasn't charm. It was warning dressed up like temptation.
He took his time, crossing the ballroom with that liquid ease that always made him look like he'd invented the floor he walked on. Forest green robes, sharp tailoring, fabric laced with something that caught the candlelight and swallowed it whole.
He held his drink the way some men held weapons—casually, confidently, as if he could ruin you without spilling a drop. A few heads turned. A few whispers followed. He didn't notice. Or maybe he did and didn't care.
Hermione had just accepted a glass of something sparkling and pink from a server in silver gloves. Her shoulders were bare. Her gown clung like a secret. She stood with her back to the crowd, posture easy, completely unaware of the little shift happening around her. Or maybe not unaware. Just unbothered.
Blaise arrived with a smile too practiced to be harmless.
"Hermione Granger," he said, low and lazy, dragging out her name like a melody he'd been waiting to hear all night.
She turned her head. Just a little. Just enough to let him see the outline of her smile.
"Blaise," she replied, calm as summer, one eyebrow lifted like she'd already decided he was going to behave and wasn't all that worried if he didn't.
He stepped closer.
She didn't move.
"And here I was thinking you'd turned into a recluse," he said. "Married life making you shy?"
She glanced at her drink as if she were thinking about the taste, not the question.
"I'm not married," she said lightly, lifting the glass to her lips. "Just in a highly structured arrangement with questionable perks."
His grin cracked wider.
"Oh, come now," he said, voice lower. "That sounds like a man problem, not a contract issue."
She gave him a look. Not cold. Not sharp. Just mildly entertained, like she'd forgotten what it felt like to be flirted with by someone who wasn't trying to mean anything by it.
And Blaise?
Blaise leaned in.
Not a lot. Just enough.
Close enough to let her catch the scent of something expensive and old, something warm, something trouble-shaped. His eyes didn't rest politely on her face. They wandered. Took inventory. Travelled with purpose and absolutely no shame.
"You look ridiculous," he murmured.
Her smile twitched. "That's a new one."
"Ridiculously unfair," he said. "And I don't mean the dress. Although…" His gaze dropped and lingered. "That too."
She laughed. Not the sharp kind meant to wound. The kind that caught between her teeth before it could go anywhere else. A sound that didn't ask for attention but got it anyway.
"I see you've lost none of your charm," she said, raising her glass in a quiet toast.
"Charm is for people who need it," he replied, watching her mouth, not her eyes.
And she was still smiling.
Still relaxed.
Still unaware of the shift happening a few paces behind her.
Draco had not moved. Not an inch.
He stood just outside the circle of their conversation, not interrupting, not approaching. But watching.
Watching Blaise lean too close.
Watching the silk of Hermione's dress stretch along her back every time she turned slightly, the way her hair curled behind her ear, the way her skin seemed too bare in the wrong light.
His mouth was a thin line. His hands, at his sides, looked like they were waiting for something to hold or break. A line pulsed in his jaw.
He had no right to say anything. He knew that.
She wasn't doing anything wrong. He knew that too.
But something about the way she smiled at Blaise, something about the way she let that man talk to her like he was allowed to, like she didn't mind being looked at like that…
It made him feel like the air in his lungs had turned into something sharp.
And Hermione?
Hermione just took another sip, head tilting toward Blaise, eyes half-lidded with the calm confidence of a woman entirely in control of the moment.
She didn't glance behind her.
Didn't feel the stare dragging heat up the back of her neck.
Didn't hear the teeth grinding behind clenched molars.
Didn't notice the precise way Draco's posture had shifted. The way his shoulders had drawn in. The way he looked like he might be counting backward from ten with his wand already lit behind his back.
Because she wasn't thinking about him.
She was laughing again. Tipping her head back just slightly, lips parting on a sound that wasn't loud but felt like a spark dropped on dry parchment.
Blaise, smug and deliberate, leaned even closer.
And Draco?
Draco breathed out through his nose like it hurt.
He didn't step forward.
Not yet.
But if Blaise touched her, even accidentally, there would be no more restraint. No ballroom. No civility.
There would only be ash.
And she still didn't know.
Didn't know she was the match.
Didn't know he was already burning.
Blaise had been watching her all night.
He watched her like a man who'd already decided what he wanted and was now simply choosing the most entertaining way to collect it.No apology in his gaze. Just that low-lidded confidence that clung to him like scent, like smoke. He didn't bother hiding it.
And Hermione—well, she'd noticed.
She just didn't care.
She wasn't here for Blaise. She wasn't here for games. She wasn't even here for Draco, though she'd arrived on his arm, let him adjust the strap of her dress before they walked in, let him touch the small of her back like it meant something. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. She hadn't decided yet.
"Hermione," he said, and somehow her name sounded like a dare when it came out of his mouth. "Tell me. How is it that the one witch I can never seem to shock always ends up being the one who floors me?"
She raised her glass without looking at him. "It's the shoes."
"Ah. So that's where the magic is." His grin widened, slow and charming and deliberate. "I knew I should've kissed them when I had the chance."
"You never had the chance," she replied calmly, her voice light, almost bored. "That was just the firewhisky talking."
"And here I was, thinking it was fate."
She turned toward him then, just enough to let her eyes skim over him, cool and assessing. "If fate wore perfume and stepped on your foot, then yes. That sounds about right."
Blaise laughed. Genuinely. Like he couldn't decide if she was the cleverest person in the room or the most dangerous, and maybe he liked the idea of both. He leaned in closer, as if proximity might make the joke land harder, or her interest tilt in his direction.
And Blaise, who could talk anyone into anything with a smile and a few well-placed compliments, blinked at her like she'd just undone half his charm with a single tug. He looked almost impressed. Maybe a little aroused.
He didn't step back.
In fact, he stepped in.
Close enough to let his fingers ghost the edge of her arm, feather-light against the satin of her dress. His smile turned lazy.
Hermione didn't stop him.
She tilted her head just enough to acknowledge the weight of his stare, her mouth tugging into the barest smirk.
But Draco saw.
He had been watching them from the other side of the room, eyes narrowed, mouth set, shoulders locked in a tension that didn't belong to polite society. He didn't blink. Didn't shift. He just stood there, the picture of composure if you didn't look too closely. But if you did, you could see the crack in it. The way his jaw ticked. The way his hand clenched around the glass he wasn't drinking from. The way his entire body had gone still in that awful, deliberate way men sometimes get when they are seconds from doing something unforgivable.
And when Blaise touched her—when his hand moved just slightly, resting low on her hip, fingers brushing a part of her dress that dipped too far, Draco moved.
He was there in an instant, like the crowd had parted for him without even knowing it, like the distance between them had always been irrelevant. His hand closed around her waist, not rough but firm, anchoring. Possessive in the way that didn't ask permission. His other hand lifted between them and pressed flat to Blaise's chest.
"DO NOT TOUCH HER."
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.
Blaise blinked slowly, his smirk flickering before it returned, thinner now. More cautious. "Touchy tonight, aren't we?"
Draco didn't answer.His eyes stayed on Hermione, and there was nothing polite in the look he gave her.
"You've had enough fun."
Hermione arched a brow. "Excuse me?"
"We're leaving."
She rolled her eyes, let him guide her away, but she didn't resist. Just glanced once over her shoulder, back at Blaise, who was already lifting his glass again.
"Possessive much?" Blaise called out with a grin, half to the room, half to himself.
Draco didn't turn.
But his grip on Hermione's waist tightened as they slipped through the crowd, silent and seething.
And Blaise, still watching, let his smile fade slowly.
"She'll come back," he murmured, more to his drink than to anyone else. "They always do."
But this wasn't about return. Not for Draco. Not tonight.
Tonight, it wasn't about jealousy.
It was about knowing that someone else had dared to touch her.
And that knowledge wasn't going anywhere.
Not ever.